The FOC thread.

Was a very small terrace, 2 bedrooms barely the size of a box room these days.
My kitchen is so small that I haven't room for a washing machine. That is in my bathroom which in comparison is huge. Three rooms upstairs 2 beds one bathroom. 2 rooms and kitchen downstairs. Built in 1890 something.
I love it. :-)
 
My kitchen is so small that I haven't room for a washing machine. That is in my bathroom which in comparison is huge. Three rooms upstairs 2 beds one bathroom. 2 rooms and kitchen downstairs. Built in 1890 something.
I love it. :-)

I'm desperately restraining myself from asking if you were the first owner...

Sorry EB... Please forgive me!
 
I'm desperately restraining myself from asking if you were the first owner...

Sorry EB... Please forgive me!
That has me rolling about laughing @Lavinda Past. No but I have the papers right from the house being built and I am only the third owner although one did rent it out at one stage. :-)


You are forgiven..... I love a laugh. xx
 
Sunday tea around 6pm, eating the remnants of Sunday Roast Dinner listening to "Sing Something Simple" on the Radio. Grandparents round our house, Dad finishing the last of the bread and butter with a chocolate digestive sandwich.

Grandparents went home, then out came the Tin Bath which was hung on the kitchen wall, Mum and Sister first, water boiled in kettle and saucepans on the gas gob, in front of the fire whilst me and Dad sat in the kitchen, then, in the same water, me and Dad in the bath. That was it for the week, just a "personal" stand up wash after that.

Kin freezing in winter, no heating, just a coal fire, started by rolling up newspaper into a coil, then some kindle followed by coal, lit it all and put the tin plate (can't remember the name) flush to the wall and a couple of broadsheet newspaper pages over the top to get the fire roaring.

God we were poor looking back but my childhood was so happy with such a loving family.
Ah right, it was called Sing Something Simple not Songs of Praise !

I remember it because me and r kid wanted to listen to the charts whilst we washed and dried the pots but by the time we'd all had tea, Radio one had finished and it was some religous shite we called Warwee Warwee ,(think of the sound a choir makes when you can't make out the words)
 
Billy Cotton Band Show, Sunday mornings. My parents would always go out for a lunchtime drink down the local while the joint was roasting (along with the potatoes) in the oven.
Don't know where my siblings were (two brothers, one sister) at those times, but I always seemed to listen to it on my own. Don't have any memory of them. Couldn't understand most of what was going on, but spent most of my time staring through the slats on the back of the radio and staring at the glowing valves inside, imagining that they were somehow the people talking and singing.
That intro — “Wakey, wakey!”

Edit: just had a look at the Wiki on it, and I'm pretty sure that info is wrong. The article claims it transferred to the telly in 1956. I have a very, very clear memory of it on the radio (and staring at those valves) — not the telly, and since I was born in autumn ’53, that would make me only two or three. And it's clearly a late Sunday morning experience. Seems impossible. I have a good memory, but not that good.
Re-edit: just had a closer look at that Wiki article. It's a stub, and it's incoherent, in fact.

Anybody else remember listening to that?
 
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My kitchen is so small that I haven't room for a washing machine. That is in my bathroom which in comparison is huge. Three rooms upstairs 2 beds one bathroom. 2 rooms and kitchen downstairs. Built in 1890 something.
I love it. :-)

Often noticed that about late Victorian/Edwardian houses. Odd, isn't it? I can only suppose it's because, demographically speaking, families were huge at that point. Five, six, seven kids a commonplace thing. Close together in age, too. So I suppose you might have four or five people in the bathroom at the same time. By contrast, only one person was going to be in the kitchen — the mother of the house! Maybe a maidservant as well, if it was that kind of a family.
(Very into this mindset at present, because I am currently reading, for the third time in my life, the truly wonderful Lark Rise to Candleford, the memoir of a rural childhood in the eighties and then adolescence in the nineties — 1880s and 1890s, that is. I loved it at the age of nineteen, and still as much at my FOC age. In passing, you pick up a lot of social history from it, although it's the sense of a child's wonder and curiosity that comes over with a vividness that is unique in my reading experience. And she was a poor child, from a very poor family — of course, they had no bathroom at all. Cannot recommend it highly enough. Incidentally, it is not one jot sentimental, or nostalgic, contrary to what people think about it. Just very, very truthful and clear-eyed).
 
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Often noticed that about late Victorian/Edwardian houses. Odd, isn't it? I can only suppose it's because, demographically speaking, families were huge at that point. Five, six, seven kids a commonplace thing. Close together in age, too. So I suppose you might have four or five people in the bathroom at the same time. By contrast, only one person was going to be in the kitchen — the mother of the house! Maybe a maidservant as well, if it was that kind of a family.
(Very into this mindset at present, because I am currently reading, for the third time in my life, the truly wonderful Lark Rise to Candleford, the memoir of a rural childhood in the eighties and then adolescence in the nineties — 1880s and 1890s, that is. I loved it at the age of nineteen, and still as much at my FOC age. In passing, you pick up a lot of social history from it, although it's the sense of a child's wonder and curiosity that comes over with a vividness that is unique in my reading experience. And she was a poor child, from a very poor family — of course, they had no bathroom at all. Cannot recommend it highly enough. Incidentally, it is not one jot sentimental, or nostalgic, contrary to what people think about it. Just very, very truthful and clear-eyed).
I lived in a back to back in Leeds for some time as a student. There was no bathroom and most in the street were the same. A few had a bathroom put in to replace a bedroom.
I showered in the sports hall.
 

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